A Play of Knaves (15 page)

Their crowd was with them, roused and ready, but now Basset had to bring them around to readiness not for more foolery but for the plays they would actually see today. Joliffe, finally standing quietly with the other players, watched the watching faces change, led by Basset with practiced skill and a carefully readied speech from their present eagerness toward a different eagerness as they understood it was their Lord’s life they were going to see, with Basset finishing, “And now, good folk, by your fair leave we go to ready for our play, that you may see and bend your knee before our Savior’s victory.”

At that, Joliffe raised the trumpet and played a quite sufficient flourish that Piers answered with a marching beat on the tabor that saw them forward—the crowd opening before them—to the churchyard gate and through it and across the churchyard to the playing place, leaving the crowd jostling through the gateway behind them.

Out of sight behind their curtains, the players hurriedly dumped juggling balls, tabor, pipes, and trumpet into a waiting hamper, stripped off their hats and outer clothing and dumped them out of the way into the hamper, too. Rose—already garbed and bearded—was standing ready to help Ellis into Christ’s loose white robe and longhaired wig while the others helped each other into their garb, with Basset setting Judas’ red hair firmly over Joliffe’s own fair hair for him. That done, Basset looked around at them all and asked, “Ready?”

“Ready,” they answered.

“How many?” he asked at Piers, who was peeking around one end of the fore-curtain.

“A couple score or so,” Piers answered.

That was a goodly number when playing so small a place as Ashewell. Basset nodded, satisfied. He looked at Gil. “Ready?”

“Ready,” Gil said firmly.

“Then go,” Basset said, and Gil went out, around one side of the fore-curtain into full view of all the lookers-on, and with the speech Joliffe had written yesterday began the players’ headlong run forward through the four plays.

The speech, telling of Christ’s coming to Jerusalem “that fatal week when evil sought God’s good for to destroy,” went well, Joliffe thought, and then it was his own time to go out, around the other end of the curtain from where Gil was retreating, to be Judas at the beginning of
Christ Against the Money-changers
, deep in frowning worry that Christ was become “too bold at challenging both lords and priests, bringing trouble down on all our heads.”

That brought the rest of the players bursting and hurrying out in a fuss and flurry of words and movements and properties, because, besides Christ, the play had to have the money-changers for him to attack, their table to overset, a scale and some bags of coins to be thrown down, a whip to use against them, at least the Jews’ High Priest Cayphas to be offended, and if not all the Apostles, at least Judas to be horrified. With Ellis playing Christ, Joliffe as Judas, Basset as Cayphas, and Gil, Piers, and Rose as everyone else, they covered their lack of numbers by all of them keeping in constant motion, giving their speeches in a rush of accusations, angers, and outrage.

Joliffe knew their audience was with them when Christ declared at the money-changers, “You knaves! You thieves and rascals! Defaming the Lord God’s honor as you do! Making his house into a den of thieves and taking what is not yours to take, like shepherds never shearing but butchering every sheep!” and among the lookers-on heads turned and some people pointed at Father Hewgo standing at his church door, glaring, his arms tightly folded across his chest, well apart from it all but making sure his disapproval lowered over everything. Joliffe had not written the lines at him but might as well have because his parishioners surely saw a match; there was even scattered laughter that would do nothing to soften him toward the players.

With no help for that, they swept on without faltering their lines or business, finished the play, and swept away behind the curtains, taking with them the money-changers’ table—a hamper with a yellow cloth laid over it—the bags of pebbles that served for coins, and the battered hanging scales, clearing the playing place for the simpler business of Judas betraying Christ to two Jewish priests.

While Joliffe, Basset, and Gil played that, the rest of the players readied for the
Last Supper
behind the curtains, throwing a white cloth over two hampers set end to end to make a table and hurriedly putting a goblet and a plate with bread on it. Joliffe, Basset, and Gil finished their scheming and went not behind the fore-curtain but away to either side and around and out of sight at the back, while Piers slowly drew aside the fore-curtain to show Christ standing (to save the trouble of stools the players did not have) alone behind the table, head bowed in deep thought over the bread and goblet. Still very slowly, Piers fastened the curtain out of the way, then went reverently to stand at one end of the table, a very short apostle.

Meanwhile, behind the rear curtain, Basset and Gil had stripped off their priestly garb with Rose and Joliffe’s help, to become apostles. There being nothing the players could do about being too few to be the twelve apostles, they ignored the problem. By the time Piers was going to his place beside the table, they were ready, and the four of them, with Rose still in her wig and beard, went out with stately slowness to stand to either side of Ellis as Christ, who raised his hands to bless the bread and wine.

As he did, Joliffe skulked away from the table, going to loosen the curtain and then draw it closed, shutting the other players from sight before he turned to the audience and began to complain again of the trouble Christ was bringing down on them, carrying on the way he was. Judas’ whining this time was meant to ease the taut quiet the
Last Supper
had brought over the audience and Joliffe succeeded, getting the laughter he wanted, everyone knowing how wrong Judas was about almost everything he was saying. But when Cayphas and the other Jewish priest, carrying a lantern to show it was now night, came out to him, a sharp quiet came over the lookers-on. And when the High Priest handed over the bag with its thirty pieces of silver as payment for betraying Christ, and Judas bowed and cringed to them in thanks, there were outright cries of anger and hissing from the audience.

Basset and Gil left, and Joliffe turned on the crowd, telling them scornfully that they were fools not to know money in the hand was worth more than a madman’s promises of Heaven. That was met with catcallings and more hissing, and he shook his fist at them all, then skulked out of sight around one side of the curtain, clutching the bag of pebbles to his chest.

Immediately Piers drew the curtain aside again, this time keeping out of sight as best he could. The “table” was gone, and one of hampers with one of the players’ gray ground cloths heaped over it was become the Garden of Gethsemane, with Ellis kneeling there. His prayer and pleading and final acceptance of his fate had the audience silent, tautly listening, so that when Gil—now the Apostle Peter—burst in on him, crying warning that, “Soldiers are come! My lord, now flee!” and Basset, Rose, and Piers—as soldiers now, in different garb—rushed in behind him, the startlement was complete.

Peter cut off a soldier’s ear and Christ healed it, was bound and shoved and dragged from sight afterward, and Judas, at the back through all of that and finally left alone, came forward to say worriedly, “I fear, I fear I have done ill beyond all that I did mean. What doom shall come my heart mistells. I fear what the morrow shall bring. My death perhaps, as mankind’s bane.” He then went miserably away, followed by more hisses.

Now Gil went out alone again, this time to tell of Christ’s torments and death, of Judas hanging himself, and of the Crucifixion, with all the ugliness Joliffe had been able to put into it, and ending with Piers drawing the curtain aside again, this time to show Rose now gowned in blue as the Virgin Mary and seated on a cloth-covered hamper with dead Christ in her arms, the crown of thorns on his head, blood streaked down his face, and his nearly naked body showing the bleeding wounds in his side and hands and feet. Among the audience, that brought gasps and signings of the cross and some women to tears before Gil drew the curtain closed again and—to the slow, unseen beating of the tabor by Piers at the back—told of Christ’s burial and the Harrowing of Hell.

That gave time for everyone else to ready for the Resurrection, so that when Gil pulled the curtain back again, there were Joliffe—with a long, loose gown thrown on over his other garb and Judas’ red wig replaced by a woman’s headkerchief—and Basset and Rose, likewise gowned and headkerchiefed as the Three Marys coming to the Tomb where Piers, with strapped-on wings, was the Angel standing on the gray cloth-covered hamper, now the tomb chest, to tell them in his clear, young voice that Christ was risen. With exclaims and tears, the Marys turned away, coming forward so they were in front of the curtain as Gil closed it. Joliffe and Basset spoke wondering words to each other and embraced Rose, the unspeaking Virgin. Then Gil opened the curtain one last time and there was Ellis standing where Piers had been, again in Christ’s white robe, holding his hands out in blessing to the Marys and the audience while, out of sight, Gil and Piers sang a “Gloria.” The Three Marys and not a few of the crowd fell to their knees. Then the Marys rose and moved forward so Gil could close the curtain behind them while he and Piers sang the end of the “Gloria.” And when the curtain was closed and they fell silent together, Basset silently counted to three with nods of his head, for Piers on the fourth nod to start a triumphant drumming on his tabor, telling the play was done.

If they hadn’t already known, the cheers, cries, and clapping that burst out then would have told them how very well their playing had gone, and Ellis dropped down to sit on the hamper with a grateful, weary
oof
of breath. It would be unseemly for Christ and his mother to take bows, so he and Rose did not join the others as they went out, for Gil and Piers to bow and Basset and Joliffe to curtsy acknowledgment to everyone. Only when they had retreated again behind the curtain was it all finally, fully finished for them, Basset beaming while he and Joliffe pulled off their headkerchiefs, Gil and Piers doing a small, quick-stepping dance of triumph.

Rose hurriedly took off the Virgin Mary’s gown, her own gown underneath it so that she was free to see to everyone else as they began to strip, too, listening to the dispersing crowd’s glad talk beyond the curtains around them. Most times the players would have had to be out there gathering coins, but since they were to have their share from whatever the whole ale-fest brought in, they were spared that effort just now, and Joliffe wondered if he was the only one tired enough to be grateful for that, until Ellis said wearily while changing Christ’s robe for his own doublet, “So now that we’ve proved we can do these plays all at once, can we never do it again?”

“I make no promises,” Basset said. That brought general groans all around him, but there was much smiling to go with it, because they
had
done it and the sense of triumph was more heady than a strong draught of good wine would have been just then.

In their own clothing again, they all helped Rose fold their garb and pack the hampers. At camp she would determine what would need cleaning and what would not, but for now it was enough to load it into the cart. That left the curtains and frame to be taken down, and while Ellis got out the mallet to knock loose the wooden pegs, Basset said to Rose, “We can see to this among us. Why don’t you take this chance to see what there is to see here?”

“And bring back something to eat because you’re all beginning to starve?” she said.

“That, too,” said Joliffe. He caught one of her hands and kissed it. “Because food will nourish all the better if brought to us by your fair self.”

She made a short sound between laughter and disgust and said, holding out a hand to Piers, “Come with me, out of the way here. You can help carry whatever I buy.”

Ever preferring food to work, Piers went with her readily. Ellis, Joliffe noted, had kept his back to Rose the whole time, nor had she looked at him.

They were just finished loading the wood and curtains into the cart when Rose and Piers came back with two meat pies and a leather bottle of ale. Sitting in a row along the grassy edge of the lane, their backs against the churchyard wall, they ate and drank in what Joliffe thought was comfortable quiet until Basset said, “Rose, what’s the trouble?”

She snapped at him, “Nothing.”

“Except you’re crying,” her father said gently.

Everyone’s head whipped around to look at her. Rose never cried. But large, shining tears were sliding down her cheeks, with more spilling over from her eyes even as she said, “No, I’m not,” and wiped fiercely at them.

They were all stopped eating, staring at her, not knowing what to do. Rose was sometimes angry, sometimes impatient, often tired—and well she had right to be, given the life they led and what she had to put up with from all of them—but she didn’t
cry
. And very gently Basset said, “What’s happened? Have we done something?”

Trying to dry her eyes with a corner of her veil, she said, “It isn’t anything,” but the words came out on a sob.

Ellis, handing his piece of pie to Gil, got up from where he was sitting as far from her as he could. Somewhat uncertainly, he came and knelt in front of her, put his hands on her shoulders, and said tenderly, “It’s no good saying it’s not anything. It’s something. Please, Rose. Tell us what.”

“He came up behind me,” she said on a sob. “Medcote. He . . .”

Covering her face with both hands, she began to sob openly. The rest of them looked at Piers, who was staring wide-eyed at his mother. To their unspoken question he shook his head, protesting, “I didn’t see it.”

With more control than Joliffe would have thought in him, Ellis said, still gently, “Please, Rose. Tell me. What did he do?”

With a broken gasp and sob, Rose dropped her hands into her lap, clutching them together to steady herself while she answered, looking down at them rather than at Ellis, “He touched me. Where he had no business touching me. And held on to my skirt when I tried to move away and whispered in my ear where he’d wait for me tonight. Because he knew I wanted him, he said. Because I was too good to waste . . . to waste on . . .”